Saving Memories

Quilts

Ladies of the Helping Hand Society working on quilt, Gage County,
Nebraska, October 1938. John
Vachon, photographer

"Well it must have
been quite a surprise to you to get such a quilt. It looks as
though some one else thought something of you as well as me,
but you ought not to have told me about any of the mens names
that were on it for I might get jealous you know but I will forgive
them this time and thank them to boot, and all the Dear Ladies
too & we'll try and think of all of them when we sleep under
it." Letter
from Uriah Oblinger to wife Mattie and daughter Ella, April 12-18,
1873.

Quilts came to Nebraska with the earliest settlers and from
territorial times,making quilts was both a practical
and an aesthetic activity for those who made their homes on the
plains. Combining scraps of fabric and stitching the larger
piece of material created together with a backing and some form
of batting in between, created warm and useful bedcovers. But
perhaps just as important, this activity served as a creative
outlet for women whose time was, of necessity, spent largely
on the time-consuming day-to-day work of keeping house, raising
a family and sometimes working alongside of their husbands in
the family business. Quilts not only showcased needlework skills,
but many also served as reminders of family and friends in the
scraps of fabric from clothing worn, embroidered names and dates,
and patterns that called to mind special times. Friendship quilts,
designed to record names of friends and family, and sometimes
special events, became popular in the United States starting
in the mid 1870's.

Edith Withers Meyers, Quilter

Edith Withers, the maker of this quilt,
was born in 1876 in Mount Morris, Illinois. She came west with
her family in 1885 to homestead near Lodgepole in Cheyenne County,
Nebraska. In 1899 she married Oscar
P. Meyers, also of Lodgepole, and they farmed and raised a family
in the area. Edith died in 1953.

This quilt made by Edith is an intriguing record of her friends
and family and the social life that she led from the time she
was eighteen until she was twenty-two. The earliest date
embroidered on the quilt is 1894, but most of the dates on the
quilt are from four years later, starting with a fortune teller
at the Allington residence on January 27, 1898. The last dated
piece is for the month of December 1898 and is embroidered "done
at last". Since Edith married Oscar Meyers (the Oscar "Myers"
embroidered on one of the quilt blocks), it seems possible that
this quilt commemorates their courtship.

Sierra Nevada Bunnell, Educator

Sierra Nevada Bunnell,
about 1890.

Sierra Nevada Bunnell was born in Ashland, Nebraska, in 1870.
Educated in Nebraska and Illinois, Sierra joined the faculty
of the Lincoln Business College in 1890 or 1891 as an instructor
of stenography and typing. In 1892, she married Asa Milo Smith
and moved to Colby, Kansas, to live and raise a family. She died
in 1933.

When she left in 1892 to marry and move to Kansas, her students
made this quilt as remembrance piece,
typing many of their names on the blocks and sewing a picture
of the college faculty into the center of the quilt.